She had succeeded in smothering her anxious qualms about the portrait Traugott Sorensen desired, having come to regard her commission in the light of a challenge. Perhaps, if he was an interesting enough character, she might even make a success of it. She hoped her subject wasn't too disappointed at having to rely on the exiguous talent of Nicola Prenn when he had wanted Robert, the father. He might prove difficult if he resented her. It was strange, his having asked for Robert Prenn, Nicola thought. People who had heard of her father were generally knowledgeable enough to know that he never painted portraits, while a large section of the public knew nothing whatsoever about him. Traugott Sorensen seemed to fit into neither group.
Nicola wondered what he would be like. All she knew was that he was elderly. The little family history Robert had given had been intriguing. She could visualise the Sorensens : large fair men with the arrogant blood of Viking ancestors in their veins.
She was enjoying the drive, in spite of the January heat. There was a glorious freedom in travelling like this, stopping in a small town when she felt hungry and under no obligation to go on when some view intrigued her, or a cluster of hills begged her to stop and receive rapture from their beauty.
Acres of parched veld, interspersed with farmland, and the towns she had never seen before; Nylstroom, Naboomspruit, Potgietersrus, the important Pietersburg, and the surrounding cattle-breeding area ... - Nicola' s hazel eyes remained eager and untired, in spite of the long hours of driving in the dazzling sun, con-
fined in the heat of her small vehicle. Anything new was an adventure, and here there was so much she had never imagined existed; odd, unexpected hillocks comprised almost entirely of huge stones, as if some mighty hand had reached out of the African sky and placed them there. In the distance rose the Soutpansberg, faraway blue mountains, seemingly out of reach.
Being Nicola, wholly unable to withhold her assistance where it seemed even remotely necessary, and a lover of cats, she had to stop when she saw the pathetically skinny black kitten at the roadside. It took some effort to catch her, half-wild as she was, but Nicola eventually managed to make a grab at the little creature, and was soon breaking up the remainder of the sandwiches she had bought in Naboomspruit and feeding the pieces to the kitten.
The land on either side of her was uncultivated here, and there were no buildings of any description in the vicinity, so her latest rescue must be very far from whatever had once been its home, if it had had one. Now that it had been fed, the kitten was content to be petted and lay purring on her lap beneath the steering-wheel, while Nicola sat contemplating it. It was a female and about two months old, she judged.
`My latest example of interference, kitten,' she murmured ruefully. 'I'll just hope the Sorensens like cats. Do Vikings like cats?' She shifted the sleepy kitten on to the passenger seat beside her and drove on.
She got lost only once in attempting to find the Sorensens' farm, and stopped to enlist the aid of the African proprietor of a tiny, dim store, seemingly miles from anywhere and which was crammed with
every commodity from bales of material to huge bags of flour. Nicola was intrigued by the man's haughty Arabic features and she had ample opportunity to observe him because it was some time before they could make themselves understood to each other, Nicola' s Afrikaans having been neglected since she had left school, something which she now found disconcerting as her would-be helper apparently didn't know any English, and the Afrikaans directions which flooded from him were issued at such a rate that she couldn't possibly hope to follow.
Eventually she thought she had grasped enough to find the farm, and she thanked him and returned to her car. She was surprised to find how near the farm she was, and soon she was through the first gate and travelling up a steep, bumpy lane.
Passing a copse of trees, Nicola was so startled by the child who ran out into the lane that she nearly winded herself, slamming on the brakes.
Nicola had had a big enough fright to be angry, and her face was pale as she got out of the car and approached the little girl who was now hovering on the grass verge, staring unblinkingly at her with undisguised curiosity in her strange shadowy grey eyes.
`Well, honestly, you might have more care when you cross roads, even if this is on private property,' Nicola said, and her voice wobbled slightly. She hadn't yet recovered from her fright. 'I might have knocked you over.'
The child, who looked about nine, made no effort to apologise. 'I didn't expect anyone to come up here this evening. What do you want?'
Nicola, who had had little experience of children, was disconcerted. This one was so very self-possessed, with her smooth, expressionless face. She was thin, but healthily so, and her pale brown hair was tangled and untidy. Where had she seen that face before? Not those shadowy eyes, Nicola thought, just the smoothness. Like a plaster Madonna.
`Who are you?' she returned the child's question with another.
`Melanie.'
`Melanie what?'
`Melanie Sorensen. What's your name?'
`Nicola Prenn '
`What have you come here for? They won't want you.'
Nicola wondered what that meant. 'I've come to paint a Mr Traugott Sorensen.'
`Uncle Traugott, my great-uncle. But he won't let you paint him. He wants some man to do that, and you're just a lady, though your name is almost like a man's,' the child said calmly.
`Well, they know I'm coming,' Nicola said easily. `Shouldn't you be getting home? The sun will be setting in a few minutes and they'll wonder where you are.'
`It doesn't matter. They don't mind.' It sounded forlorn, somehow, but the little face remained devoid of expression.
'What were you doing in the copse?' Nicola enquired brightly. The child's calm manner made her slightly uneasy. How did one talk to children?
The shadowy grey eyes grew round and mysterious.
'I had things to do,' Melanie Sorensen said, dropping her voice to a whisper.
Nicola smiled. That had sounded more naturally childlike. She gazed through the trees. Imaginative games would be born and acted out among them, and they would remain a private part of Melanie's world, something she would not share. 'Is Mr Barak Sorensen your father?' she asked.
`My uncle. I haven't got a father. Or a mother. They died.' The childishness had vanished again and it was said with an adult dignity. Did it conceal pain or had she been too young to remember?
'I'm sorry. My mother died too—when I was very young, but I was lucky enough to still have my father,' Nicola said softly.
`Can you remember her?'
'Very slightly.'
'I can remember mine And Daddy. I was five, and they got killed. I'm nine now.'
`And are there just you, and your uncles Traugott and Barak?' Nicola enquired. If there were only the two men, that might explain why the little girl was wandering alone, far from the farmhouse, when nightfall was so close at hand. Two men on their own, one elderly, might unwittingly neglect a child.
'There's Aunt Ellen.'
'Uncle Barak's wife?'
Melanie shook her head. 'Uncle Traugott's. She's old, but not as old as him Uncle Barak hasn't got a wife, but I think he's going-to marry my auntie. She says so. She's only nine years older than me, though.'
`Twice your age,' Nicola said lightly. Which auntie was this, then? A relative or someone else? She continued, 'Would you like to ride back to the house with me? Won't Aunt Ellen be worried about you?'
Melanie shook her head. 'I don't think so,' she said gravely. 'I'll go back soon, though.' She moved nearer to the car and looked in. 'Did you bring your kitten with you, then?'
`No, I found her about ten miles back,' Nicola explained. 'She was starving, poor thing.'
`What are you going to do with her?'
Nicola looked dubious. 'I don't know. I hope your family will let me keep her at the house. If they don't want her, I suppose I'll take her back to Johannesburg with me when I leave. I have two cats there already.'
`And we've got three,' Melanie said. And a dog. They won't want her. I expect they'll fight with her. Uncle Barak won't want her either. He'll be furious.'
It was all said in a steady monotone and Nicola looked at the child anxiously. Perhaps Uncle Barak was a monster of a man. Melanie was certainly repressed. She hadn't smiled once yet. Nicola hastily clamped down on fantasies of ill-treatment and neglect.
`Are you sure you won't let me give you a lift?' she said as she got into the Volkswagen again.
`Sure,' Melanie repeated.
`Goodbye, then,' said Nicola, starting up the engine. She wasn't happy about leaving the little girl, but perhaps her guardians, as she presumed the adult Soren
sens to be, believed in giving children as much freedom as possible. She caught a last glimpse of Melanie run-
ning back towards the trees, a slight figure in blue jeans, her pale brown hair streaming out behind her as she ran.
Nicola continued on her way, now driving between vast plantations of attractive green avocado trees. Further on she recognised a banana plantation. Somehow she had thought of bananas as being exclusive to Natal. But of course ! This was the Piesanghoek area, and `piesang' was the Afrikaans for banana. They seemed to have several sidelines, she thought as she caught sight of an African youth herding a small flock of sheep on the lower slopes of the mountains.
And there ahead of her was the farmhouse. Nicola slowed the car, caught up in the beauty of the scene. To live here ! She wondered if the Sorensens thought of themselves as fortunate. The house nestled against the mountain, and the long driveway swept between terraced lawns, right up to the wide veranda. From where Nicola was, it appeared as if the veranda ran right round three sides of the square, mellow old building, and the crimson and flame of the setting sun caught the windows of the house, making them glitter fierily, and touched the white walls, turning them pink.
Nicola brought the Volkswagen to a halt in front of the wide steps leading up to the big veranda, and got
out. As she did so, someone appeared at the double doors which opened into the house, and she went quickly up the stairs, smiling.
Then suddenly Nicola was no longer smiling and her hand had gone to her mouth. Of all people ... ! Unforgotten, for it was only a week since she had last seen him. The appraising grey eyes and powerful physique
were only too familiar. Hadn't the memory of this man and the girl, Denise Graeme, who was his fiancée, caused her to burn with humiliation over and over again in the last few days? The occasion of their first meeting had been the most embarrassing moment in her life.
At first the man's face held no hint of recognition; then his eyes grew cold and his mouth became a straight line. It was the hard mouth of one who would be totally relentless towards anyone he disliked, Nicola thought apprehensively as she paused uncertainly halfway up the stairs.
`What am I supposed to say? That it's a small world?' he said with icy humour which wasn't really humour at all. He looked at her with profound distaste.
The atmosphere between them was taut, and the tension needed easing. But what, she wondered, could she say?
`How embarrassing,' she said eventually.
CHAPTER TWO
`WHY embarrassing?' he enquired without even looking at her. His grey eyes were fixed on the panorama of distant blue hills which comprised the view from the front of the house.
`Well, it is, isn't it?' Nicola said helplessly.
for you.' It was a statement.
`Yes, of course. For me. I didn't mean you,' she replied hastily, confusion staining her cheeks a delicate pink.
`Naturally,' he said, unamused. 'You are Nicola Prenn, I take it?'
She nodded. 'And I suppose you're Mr Barak Sorensen?'
`You suppose correctly. If I had realised who you were the other night ...' He didn't even bother to finish it.
`You'd have cancelled the arrangement,' she completed it for him, and he didn't deny it. 'And if I had known who you would turn out to be, I wouldn't have come.'
`Why not? Because you feel I know too much about you? Did Baxter know you were coming to Piesanghoek?'
`Todd?' Nicola was genuinely surprised.
`Who else?' Barak Sorensen said impatiently. 'Never mind, I can't stop your adding to Hilary Baxter's unhappiness. What was the idea? Woman and woman ... the primitive challenge? Carrying it to the enemy's camp?'
Nicola grasped his meaning. For one thoughtless moment she was tempted to tell him the truth of the matter. Then she remembered how it had all come about. Denise Graeme had needed her help. It couldn't be undone now. She said, 'Of course, you could prevent my adding to Mrs Baxter's unhappiness, Mr Sorensen. You could send me packing.'
`Unfortunately I can't,' he told her curtly. Traugott, my uncle, is employing you, not me.'
`You could tell him. I'm sure he's as upright and moral as you are, never out of step, so he'd share your opinion.'
It might have been a glint of humour which showed momentarily in the grey. eyes. 'Who said I was upright and moral? It depends, of course, on how one defines those terms, and in your context ... At my age,
likely to need a woman, am I not? And I don't yet have a wife.'
Nicola flushed and wondered what his age was. Late thirties, she concluded, seeing the lines about his mouth. 'Not what I'd expect from the grandson of a missionary,' she mocked, rallying.
`Your behaviour isn't what I'd expect from the daughter of the man I met and liked the other night,' he taunted, his eyes dangerous.
`Perhaps you don't know the man. It was a very short meeting, wasn't it?' said Nicola, simply for the sake of it.
`Perhaps not,' he admitted. .
Still they stood on the -steps, Nicola having to look up at him because he was two steps above her. 'What are you going to do now?' she demanded.
He shrugged elegantly. 'Nothing, Miss Prenn. Traugott has come round to the idea that if he can't have Robert Prenn, then Nicola Prenn is the next best thing. So you will remain here -until you have completed the portrait, and Traugott and Ellen will hear nothing of our former meeting.'
Nicola genuflected in brief mockery. 'Yes, my lord,' she said demurely, then retreated to the foot of the stairs as she saw the expression on his face.
`I'd advise you to walk a little more. softly, Miss Prenn,' he said, following her down.
`Meaning that I'm in the position of having to rely on your discretion.'
Put it that way if you like,' he said, not interested.
`You're not what I expected,' she said frankly, staring at him. 'I thought—I imagined a fair Viking.'
`Preconceived ideas ... My mother was dark,' he informed her briefly. 'Let's get your luggage into the house.'
Nicola opened the car. 'I haven't brought much. Would you take my painting materials? Please be careful. And could the kitten have some milk right away, please?'
`Kitten?'
`Yes.' Nicola picked up the sleepy animal. 'I found it on the road. It was starving and in very poor condition.'
`Yes?' Barak Sorensen's face was expressionless as he regarded first the cat, then Nicola. 'I can see that. In addition, it probably has fleas, isn't house-trained and is also an unspayed female. They always are.'
`She is a female,' Nicola admitted meekly. 'And she's much too young to have been spayed.'
`And we're expected to welcome her as a member of the household?'
`Only till I go,' Nicola pleaded. 'If you don't want her, I'll take her back to Johannesburg with me. Or you might know someone who wants a cat.'
`The farms around here have more than enough as it is,' he said patiently. 'There are three here.'
`I suppose you think I ought to have left her to starve,' Nicola said heatedly.
He smiled suddenly; just a brief lightening of his dark features. 'Oh, bring her in. You can hand her over to Sarah in the kitchen.'
`Is she the maid?'
`Yes. Come on.'
So Nicola went up the stairs again. She sai
d awkwardly, looking at him over her shoulder, 'Thank you, Mr Sorensen. I realise that you must regard the cat and me as an imposition ...'
`Don't mention it,' he said. 'I put up with a lot for my uncle's sake. He has to be humoured.'
Nicola's eyes flashed, but she kept silent. Barak Sorensen was like no one else she had ever met, and she detested him. She wasn't used to being despised and the feeling was an uncomfortable one. As for Traugott, it sounded as if he was going to prove a difficult subject.
They went through a short hallway and into a very large lounge where they were met by an African woman who had the same arrogantly proud features of the man who had directed Nicola to the farm.
`Sarah, Miss Prenn has brought a kitten. You'd' better take it into the kitchen and attend to it,' Barak Sorensen said after he had introduced them briefly. `And please tell Madam that she's arrived.'
`Yes, sir.' Smiling, Sarah took the kitten from Nicola and left them.
`We'll wait for Ellen,' said Barak.
Nicola looked around the big room. It seemed to be at the centre of the house, with the rest built around it,
except on the front where big windows commanded a magnificent view. It was growing darker outside now, so she turned to study the room. It was in magnificent taste, she admitted reluctantly to herself. What a wonderful old piano ! The carpet was luxurious and thick, deadening all sound, and the furniture was pre-Boer War, beautifully preserved.
However, it was the pictures adorning the walls which impressed her most. Here hung the works of South Africa's best artists, as well as some by Europeans, treasures which Nicola would have given much to have possessed. Such marvels ... you need a fortune to own even one. Just looking at them was an adventure. She recognised one of her father's works, a corn pelling view of Knysna in the evening. The colours were sombre, even dull, but Robert's brush had captured a potential drama which excited the viewer to a pitch of uneasiness.
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